Substance
by cainesorened
Summary: One is committed to football and the other is trying not to commit to anything at all. (Dual POV, AU)
1. Chapter 1 - Eren

"Why did you leave?"

My voice was a hoarse whisper because I'd asked this too many times before. I asked this when I passed pictures of my parents in the house, when parents' evening was a disaster, when I was kept awake at night by the thought that I'd done something that resulted in my own father leaving home and not coming back.

My mother died three years ago.

More specifically, she was murdered. I preferred the word 'died' because it was gentler and, although I didn't like to admit it, I was still coming to terms with her death. Then, to rub salt in the wound, last year when my adopted sister Mikasa, who'd lived with us since we were both nine, and I had a sleepover at our friend Armin Arlert's house, my father left home and by the next morning it was impossible to say where he'd gone.

No note. No explanation at all.

My sister and I waited. Weeks passed and we moved in with the Arlerts, a family that only consisted of Armin himself and his grandfather. None of us ever had an easy childhood.

We waited for nothing. Nothing happened. My family were Mikasa, Armin, and his grandfather, although we never saw much of the latter, who was an avid traveller.

But still I saw my father in my dreams.

"Why did you leave?" I repeated. I was sitting at a table, opposite the man who I saw so much of myself in.

"I can't tell you that, Eren." His eyes were dull and betrayed no emotion behind the glasses that created such a barrier between us. It was annoying, knowing that this was simply a version of my father that my mind had created to keep myself occupied in my sleep. My real father wasn't like this, from what I could remember.

"Why not? Don't you think you owe your own son an explanation?"

"Why would I?"

I sighed. "Because I don't have a clue whether or not my dad is even alive, let alone what the hell he's doing. It's not fair on me! We all lost Mum and then I lost you too! So did Mikasa. I don't understand why you left and it's driving me crazy!"

I couldn't pinpoint the moment where the dream ended and reality took over, but before I knew it I was ranting at the ceiling, which would probably give me more answers than I was getting in my sleep.

I blinked a few times, my eyes adjusting to the dim light of the morning. I glanced at the clock on my bedside table. It was 5.37AM and the world was grey.

"Eren?" I looked over to the door and saw Mikasa. She looked worried, although rather comical with her hair sticking up like she'd stuck her finger in a socket. "Are you okay? I heard you talking in your sleep."

"I'm fine," I replied quickly.

"Did you have a bad dream?"

"Yeah, probably. I can't remember." I wasn't sure why I was lying to Mikasa. After all, she'd probably have told me that dreams like that were a natural part of grief. But she wasn't having them as far as I knew, so it seemed pretty pathetic to be having them in the first place. I didn't want to be weak.

"Go back to sleep, Eren," My sister smiled gently. "I'll wake you up at seven."

"Seven?"

"We have school today, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah. Wake me up at seven. Or, like, not at all," I groaned as I pulled my duvet up to cover my face. My sister laughed quietly and I heard her leaving.

My hand went to the key I kept on a chain around my neck. It was the key to our old house, and the last thing that tied me to my parents other than blood itself.

I couldn't remember falling asleep but somehow I woke up again at seven. Then I fell asleep again, and at quarter past seven I was being attacked by a pillow to the face.

"Wake up, Eren!" I caught the pillow in question and pulled it away from Armin, his blonde hair washed and damp. I rolled over and yawned.

"Alright, desperate times call for desperate measures," Mikasa muttered and the next thing I knew, I was drenched in cold water, wide awake and spluttering.

"What the hell was that for?" I yelled at the two giggling teenagers who held identical empty jugs.

"We're really sorry, Eren," Armin said quickly, his blue eyes wide as he backed away from my bed. "But you weren't awake and we have school today -"

"You're such an asshole," I said as I jumped out of bed and started chasing my terrified best friend, who was essentially my brother.

At five to eight we were all somehow on the bus, and by twenty to nine we were sat in registration, deep in conversation with Connie and Sasha about our summer holidays even though we'd only seen them both about two weeks ago.

"It was so big, you should have seen it!" Sasha said loudly as we received questionable glances from some students on a nearby table. " I'm talking about a burger, don't be so childish," She huffed as she elbowed a snickering Connie in the ribs.

I'd asked Connie many times if he'd ever date Sasha but everyone knew her true love was food. Of course, Sasha was a brilliant person. She was enthusiastic about everything she did, uplifting whenever anybody felt bad, and a fantastic wild card on the sports teams; nobody could predict what Sasha Braus would do next. But it was true that she started most conversations by talking about food.

"Eren Jaeger to Mike Zacharius' office straight away, please," A shrill voice on the overhead speaker called.

"What have you done now?" Connie asked, laughing.

"I don't know, do I? School started literally five minutes ago!" I held my hands up in an innocent surrender.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and started to make my way to Mike's office. He was a PE teacher and the football coach. Football was the only thing I excelled at in school. In everything else, Mikasa and Armin outshone me.

I knocked on the door of his office and opened it. Mike was sitting behind his desk looking unusually sheepish. I sat down on the other side of his desk.

"Hey there, Mike," I greeted him when he said nothing.

"Good morning, Eren," He said quietly. This wasn't like him. Mike was generally a pretty full-on person. When I first tried out for Maria Comprehensive's football team, he actually sniffed me. It was a strange experience.

"What's up?" I asked.

He took a deep breath. "Eren, I'm sure you know how much I care for the football team, and I appreciate how much commitment and determination you put into playing."

"This doesn't sound good, Coach," I said reluctantly.

He ignored this. "I've heard from Hannes that you've been having anger management sessions." Hannes was the school counsellor. It was true that I went to him for anger management. I could already see where this conversation was going.

"So much for confidentiality," I slumped back in the chair.

"After much discussion with Hannes and the headmaster," Mike said in reference to Dot Pixis, a nice man, but more professional than anything else, "we've unfortunately decided that it's best for you not to be on the team this year, for the safety of the other players."

It annoyed me that I couldn't control my anger, because by getting so pissed off at Mike, I was showing him exactly why Hannes and the headmaster didn't want me on the team. I couldn't help it, though.

"You can't do that. That's not fair!" I sounded childish. It was the second time I'd used that argument today, and it was pathetic. "You're talking about me like I'm some kind of wild animal. Of course people are going to get injured on the pitch! Hannes even told me once that sport is one of the best ways to let anger out, so you're just going to make it worse!"

"Don't shoot the messenger," Mike warned.

"You know I'm one of the best on the team! Who's going to take my place, Jean Kirstein?" I spat his name like dirt. Jean and I hadn't got on since the day we met, when we both tried out for the same position on the team and it went to me.

Mike looked at me for a moment and then back down at his desk.

"No way," I said.

"I'm very sorry, Eren."

"Jean is replacing me?"

He nodded.

"Is this some kind of twisted joke?"

"Jean Kirstein is an excellent football player," Mike said in a pathetic attempt to defend himself.

"Jean Kirstein makes me want to set myself on fire," I snarled as I grabbed my bag and stormed out of Mike's office.

The bell rang. I checked my new timetable. Double English, with Jean. "Someone pass me a fucking lighter," I muttered to myself as I joined the stream of teenagers heading to their lessons.

When I got there, I sat next to Connie, on the opposite side of the classroom to Jean. He made no attempt to hide his hatred as he glared at me so I didn't either. A lot of the girls, including Mikasa to my dismay, thought Jean was one of the most handsome boys in our year, and I was pretty sure that his best friend Marco Bodt thought the same, but I'd told Mikasa countless times that there was a reason why _I _had that spot on the football team and not Jean. Now I couldn't say it.

"You alright, man?" Connie asked.

"Yeah, whatever," I replied as I narrowed my eyes as I stared at the self-centred arsehole across the room, who muttered something to Marco. Marco looked alarmed. I had no idea why the hell he was friends with Jean but I admired the fact that he could put up with someone so far up his own ass. That would explain why his face looked so shit.

Our teacher was a blonde woman who introduced herself simply as Miss Nanaba last year when we started this awful GCSE English course. Today she took five minutes to give us the expected lecture about the importance of this year, and the effect it would have on the rest of our lives. I'd never thought much about the future but it involved football. Well, maybe not anymore.

"The first thing I'd like to tackle this year is your group oral assessment." The class groaned. There were a few snickers at the word 'oral' but that was nothing new from a set two class that was mostly made up of boys. Nanaba started reeling off a list of groups she'd prepared. Yet again, complaints were thrown around the classroom as students were grouped with people they despised and dragged their feet across the room to sit by them, so when she reached my name, I swear to God my heart was literally in my throat. Or figuratively, as Nanaba would have corrected me.

"Eren Jaeger, Connie Springer..." I looked at Connie and we both grinned. "Marco Bodt, Jean Kirstein."

My first day of Year 11 was going so badly that I actually looked around the room for secret cameras from those practical joke shows on TV. I wondered if there was a camera crew hiding behind the bookshelf at the back of the class, but then I thought that no one would pull a prank this cruel.

"Come on, Eren, we should move," Connie said as he sighed and moved his chair back.

"No."

"What?"

"I am not moving. _He _can move over here."

"_He _has a name," Connie reminded me.

I looked at Jean. Jean looked at me. He crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. Connie grabbed my arm before I could mimic Jean's actions, and I was dragged across the room. Connie pushed me into the chair furthest away from Jean and sat down next to me.

"I don't like this either, you know," Connie said quietly. "I'd rather be working with Sasha."

I ignored him. "What the hell is your fucking problem?" I hissed to Jean as he glared at me again with a glint in his eyes that reminded me somewhat of Satan watching the world burn.

"Your existence." He snapped.

"I can't do this," I said loudly to Nanaba as I turned around. She dropped her hand from the whiteboard and looked at me in despair. Behind her were the words 'ORAL ASS', written neatly on the board.

"You did that on purpose, didn't you, Eren?" Jean said mischievously. I could feel about twenty five pairs of eyes looking at me. "You're trying to make a fool of our teacher and you're only making a fool of yourself."

"Shut up, Jean," I muttered as I looked down at my hands, my fingers drumming against the desk.

"Yes, I think Jean is right," Nanaba said. "If you can't survive for ten minutes without mocking my subject, I don't know how you'll get a job in the future."

"Yeah, your football career's really not looking likely now," Jean grinned.

"Shut _up_, Jean." I couldn't allow myself to argue. I was half an hour into my first day of Year 11 and I would not be chucked out of class and sent to the headmaster's office because Jean wanted to have a bit of fun in an English lesson and take the piss out of the kid with anger issues.

"You should really watch your behaviour this year," Nanaba said sternly. "Now, I know you have trouble controlling your temper, but we can't have a repeat of last year –"

"Shut up!" I shouted. "Both of you, shut up and leave me alone!"

Nanaba looked furious, Jean was on the verge of a hysterical laughing fit, and I was already preparing myself for a row from Pixis. Then the first good thing in the whole morning so far happened. Our escalating argument was interrupted by someone opening the door.

I knew most people in school. No, actually, most people knew me. They knew me as the boy who couldn't keep his fists by his side, the boy who was suspended for three days when I beat the shit out of Jean – God, it was satisfying – in Year 9 because he said I couldn't play football, the boy with a sketchy home life. But I didn't know the sixth former in black and dark green uniform, shorter than most of my own class, with no expression, dead eyes and black hair over a questionable undercut that stood at the door with his hand resting lightly on the door handle.

"Am I interrupting something?" He asked, although I could tell from his tone of voice that he didn't actually care whether or not he was.

"Nothing important," Nanaba replied as she glared at me.

The boy looked at me, studying me with a small amount of interest as I looked back at him and held my breath. "No, I don't suppose anything important really happens in an English classroom."

Nanaba did not look happy, but at least she wasn't angry at me anymore.

"That's an interesting topic to study," He said as he averted his gaze to the whiteboard. "I thought it was on the A level course. Is there a DVD to go along with that?"

"Are you here for any particular reason?" Nanaba asked, frustrated. "Or are you also here to mock my subject?"

"Some unprepared teacher needs a spare workbook," He replied, staring at the hastily organised piles of books at the back of the class and looking unamused.

"You can find them yourself," Our teacher answered shortly as she turned back to the board and wrote the letters 'ESSMENT'. I watched the sixth form student walk to the back of the class and eye the wreckage of books with more hatred than what was in Jean's eyes when he looked at me. He picked a workbook up reluctantly and walked out without even thanking Nanaba.

"Role model," Connie whispered.

Nanaba started handing out information sheets. Apparently she'd completely forgotten about blaming me for something I didn't even do on purpose. "More like saviour," I muttered. "Who was he, anyway?"

"No idea," Connie shrugged. "Never seen him in my life."

"What's up, Eren, got a crush on the new midget from Year 12?" Jean sneered.

"I'm not gay, Jean," I reminded him.

"No proof to show that you're straight, either," He leaned back in his chair.

Okay, that was true. I was one of the few virgins in Year 11. In my defence, I was hardly even legal and even though I dreaded talking to Mikasa about anything to do with relationships, she'd drilled it into me that I should not have meaningless sex. It wasn't exactly a successful conversation, though, and it ended up with me being pinned to the floor and Mikasa punching me repeatedly because I'd tried to sneak away. I would've loved to have heard her attempting to have the same conversation with Armin. Mikasa was the responsible one of the three of us. Armin liked reading Wikipedia pages of cities we couldn't afford to visit, crying about the fact that we couldn't afford to visit them, and playing strategic games such as Monopoly. That usually ended disastrously, too. I barely knew what patience was, let alone had any myself.

Anyway, I didn't reply to Jean. Instead I looked down at the information sheet on our desk and saw that our topic was whether or not marijuana should be legalised in the UK. It was controversial. It would cause many arguments between Jean and me, but then so did everything.

"So, what do you think, Freckled Jesus?" Connie asked Marco, and I quickly zoned out. I somehow managed to get through an hour and a half of English by making notes on the debate that the rest of my group were having, and listening to Connie complaining about the fact that boys and girls weren't allowed in the same group so he couldn't work with Sasha. Breaktime rolled around quickly and I was first out of the class.

"Eren!" I heard Armin call from further down the corridor. I waited for him and Mikasa to catch up with me before we started walking together. They were in the top set, the same class as I'd been in two years ago before our GCSEs started, and before I started missing most of my lessons to go to pointless anger management sessions with Hannes that I didn't benefit from in the slightest.

"How was your English lesson?" Mikasa asked me.

"It was shit."

"Don't swear, Eren."

"Well, tell Jean not to piss me off, then!"

Mikasa and Armin both gave a familiar groan. They were both aware of my hatred for Jean, but I was pretty sure that Mikasa enjoyed the attention that he gave her and Armin was just plain scared of him. "What's he done now?" Armin sighed.

"Right, you heard me being called to Mike's office this morning, right?" I began.

"You should call him Mr Zacharius," Armin said quietly.

"Whatever. So I went to his office and he kicked me off the football team because I have a small anger problem."

"Small anger problem." Mikasa repeated, deadpan. "That's like saying a mass murderer has a small killing problem."

"My point is that Jean Kirstein is replacing me," I continued, almost growling as I said his name. "And then I went to English and he was being a cocky douchebag like he always is and then he almost got me in trouble by making it look like it was my fault that Nanaba wrote 'oral ass' on the whiteboard!"

"Scandalous," Mikasa murmured.

"You've had an eventful two hours," Armin said as he let out a small laugh.

"This isn't funny," I protested hopelessly.

"Let's talk about something that actually matters," Mikasa said loudly. "I want to start a girls' football team."

"You do that, Mikasa," I muttered.

"Yeah, you try telling the male-orientated PE department that we should have a girls' football team, Eren." She replied. "It's so disgusting and embarrassing that we ignore the talents of the athletic young women in this school. Mr Pixis should be ashamed of this place!"

Number one on the list of things to know about Mikasa Ackerman: She was a passionate feminist, and rightfully so; I agreed with her on this one. Now that Jean was on the boys' football team, it would be shit. There was no question about it. It would be shit. So we needed another team to represent the school, and there were tons of girls in our school that could kick Jean's ass any day. A girls' football team was a necessity.

"I bet I could get Mike on our side," I grinned as we stepped outside. "He's not that old, is he? He must be in his twenties or something. He's not as old fashioned as the rest of them."

"We could make a petition!" Armin suggested enthusiastically.

"Yes, Armin, a petition," Mikasa said with a small smile. Then I felt a hand the size of a small ship on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Reiner Braun and his crooked nose looking down at me with a grin, his brown haired friend Bertholdt Fubar standing behind him. Their friendship reminded me somewhat of Jean and Marco's friendship, except Reiner wasn't archenemy material and Bertholdt hadn't been nicknamed Jesus.

"Ready for football this year, Eren?" Reiner asked in the deepest voice known to mankind.

"Um—" I began.

"Actually," Mikasa interrupted, "Eren is going to help me start a girls' football team this year, so he won't be on the team."

"Really?" Reiner briefly looked surprised, but we all knew that although Reiner was definitely a close second to Mikasa, my sister would always be the star athlete of the school.

"Yeah," I nodded. "It's just the right thing to do, you know? For society."

"For humanity!" Reiner yelled. "Good for you, Eren."

"Hey, Eren," Jean called from across the schoolyard, kicking a football about with Marco and Connie. "I'll try my best to live up to the standards you've set. Won't be hard, though."

Marco looked at me apologetically as if to say _sorry for my absolute prick of a best friend_, and kicked the ball over to me. Reiner tried to intercept it as I tried to kick it over to Connie, so instead I kicked it as hard as I could away from him, right over his head.

And onto the roof.

"Nice one, Eren," Connie rolled his eyes.

I ran over to the drainpipe that ran up the side of the building, which luckily for me was more of a cabin than a building. In fact, I managed to climb up the drainpipe without as much hassle as, say, Jean would make.

The problem was that the roof itself was sloped, so it was an absolute bitch to walk across to get to the football, which was on the other end. By the time I'd wobbled halfway there, I was seriously regretting my impulsive decision.

"Are you stuck?" I heard Bertholdt ask worriedly from below.

"No, I am absolutely fine," I replied confidently as I pictured Jean suppressing a laugh. I didn't dare to look down. Okay, so maybe I kind of was stuck.

"Poor Eren Jaeger," Jean called sarcastically. "You're absolutely useless."

_Ignore him_, I told myself.

"Can't get a girlfriend, can't even get balls," He continued. "Maybe this is why you were kicked off the team."

"Just ignore him," I hissed to myself.

"Oi." That wasn't Jean's voice, or any voice I was familiar with. I panicked and thought it was a teacher, and I froze, my arms held out at my sides for balance. "Don't be so quick to call Eren Jaeger useless when many would say the same about you."

I braved a quick glance down, and at first I didn't see anything. After a double take I noticed the sixth form student that came into English this morning.

"And I'd strongly recommend," The nameless boy said slowly, "that you don't diminish the brat's ability to get laid, because I have seen your face twice during my entire life and I can already tell by the hideous look of it that you aren't getting any either, from whatever gender your preference is."

For the first time that morning, Jean Kirstein was speechless.

I actually managed to count to seven before he spoke again. "What the hell are you going to do, carry him down yourself?"

"I'm five foot four, you brainless idiot, do you really think I'm capable of doing that?"

He didn't give Jean a chance to speak again. I watched him walk away as he came into better view, and just as he was about to go inside, he turned to look at me. I gave him a grateful smile and he simply nodded. As he went inside, I vowed to thank him in person when I had the chance.

I had been saved from defeat by Jean Kirstein twice today, by the same person. But at the end of the day, or at least the morning, I was still stuck on a fucking roof.


	2. Chapter 2 - Levi

My morning was shit.

School, sixth form, whatever people who enjoyed this form of torture called education enough to give it a name, and enjoyed repetition and routine enough to stick with whatever they decided it was called, was shit.

No, that wasn't entirely true. Well, it was, but school was a small brushstroke of a much larger painting, and that painting, full of miserable colours that didn't appeal to the eye, was called life. Those who liked school actually enjoyed life. They enjoyed existing, they enjoyed the pathetic process of breathing that we sadly couldn't live without, whether or not we wanted to live at all. I didn't see the appeal in life myself; I was alive and I hated most things about it, and if I were dead, I wouldn't know any different. I didn't care enough about my life to end it, though.

In short, my morning was shit, just like everything else, and the only thing I currently liked was the word 'shit'. It was actually one of my favourite words, along the word 'brat'. Thankfully I was graced with a free timetable throughout the morning before lunch, so I spent the time trying to find my way around the absolute dump that was Maria Comprehensive School. I heard an argument starting in one of the classrooms as I passed it and thought of the times when I'd been in similar situations, so I decided to save a kid from a row. It would probably be my only good deed of the day. The English teacher took an instant dislike to me but I wasn't the one stupid enough to write 'ORAL ASS' on the whiteboard during a lesson with a bunch of pubescent teenagers. I'd escaped unscathed, with a workbook I didn't need now in my possession.

It was purely coincidental that I'd saved the same brat later on in the morning. I'd learned that his name was Eren Jaeger and that he was reckless bordering on idiotic, but stupid behaviour was acceptable at that age, wasn't it? Only at the age of seventeen, when you were kicked out of college after your first year for being useless at everything thanks to spending your time out and about, starting fights, did anything begin to matter.

By my fourth lesson which was maths, just before lunchtime, I wasn't hungry and wasn't planning on getting food. Again, eating was another part of a process that I didn't want to partake in. I was pretty good at maths – it was straightforward and there was only one answer to every question – but I didn't really mind when a man with short blond hair and wrinkles across his forehead to mark about fifty years of life, turned up at the door and asked to speak to –

"Er, Reev-ale?"

Of course, I'd been registered on the school system with the spelling I'd specifically asked them not to use, to prevent idiots who had no clue how to go about pronouncing obscure French names. I rolled my eyes and got up. The man closed the door behind us as we both left the classroom.

"It's pronounced Levi," I told him without bothering to keep the irritation out of my voice.

"Ah, sorry about that," He said as he smiled down at me. I was used to people looking down at me, physically and metaphorically; I was barely scraping five foot four and in my old school I was considered a lowlife thug who everyone had actually expected to be a dropout, but no one was surprised when I was actually kicked out instead.

I waited for him to speak. I wasn't here to start conversations. "My name is Hannes," He said. I didn't reply, and I always wondered what reply people even expected when they told me their name. Did they think I was going to compliment their parents' taste in names?

"I'm the school counsellor," Hannes continued, and I inwardly groaned. Of course they'd target someone like me. On paper I probably looked like the typical problem child, and I'd admit that I had the attitude of one, too, but personally I'd always thought of myself as more of a hopeless case than someone who would actually benefit from any help.

"I'm not interested," I told him.

"Perhaps you shouldn't be so apprehensive," He replied. I almost winced. I could almost smell how much this guy was trying to put his training into practice. _Don't use negative words. Make suggestions instead, and the youngster that is destined for God knows how many awful years on this planet may actually listen to you, thinking that they're choosing to do what you're telling them to do, by themselves. Isn't that just magical? _"Counselling helps lots of people your age." I noticed that he didn't refer to me as a child. He was trying to talk to me as if I was an adult, even though I was still going to school every day. Then again that was out of choice, but what could you do without A levels these days?

"It's not going to do anything for me," I stated.

"Dot Pixis, our headmaster, has strongly suggested that we give this a go," Hannes attempted another smile. I could almost admire how he said 'our' and 'we', as if Pixis didn't have utmost control over me and every other poor soul in this school like a hawk hunting its prey.

"Strongly suggested," I repeated. This part was simple. It meant 'forced'. You could have written the words 'shit training' over this old man's face, but that wasn't needed since it was already so fucking obvious. "Fine." I shrugged. I had nothing to lose, nothing at all.

Hannes smiled gratefully and told me he'd contact me soon to tell me when this bullshit would start. I just nodded, a small part of myself feeling ashamed for falling back into the system. Then I went back into class without bothering to say goodbye, sat down and copied what was on the board for the next few minutes. I tapped the shoulder of the ginger girl who sat in front of me, for her to turn around. She did just that, and I saw that she was beautiful, the kind of beauty I appreciated but wanted other people to be able to admire every day of their lives, not me. Her eyes were wide, maybe with fear as she said, "Yes?"

"Where do you smoke around here?" I asked her.

Her face relaxed and she gave me a knowing smile, as if that was a predictable question from someone who looked like he hated the world.

I didn't hate the world. I just hated living in it.

"Behind the recycling bins at the back of the gym," She replied.

I didn't thank her. Thanking people wasn't exactly a part of my daily routine.

When the lesson ended, I waited for the girl to pack up and watched her closely as I did so. Her nails were slightly yellow and her hands were restless. She was a smoker, but not an obsessive one. She noticed me watching her and she smiled at me as she finished packing up.

"Hey there," She said as we started walking out of the class together.

"Hi."

"You're new, aren't you?" She asked, and I nodded once. "I thought I didn't know your face. My name's Petra Ral."

"Levi," I told her in reference to myself.

"Nice to meet you, Levi," Petra smiled as we walked into the sunlight outside. The light made her hair shine like a halo and her smile would have been contagious, had I allowed myself to express the same emotion. It was the smile of someone who liked living, the smile of someone who took in her surroundings and appreciated them instead of despising them for being there. "So, do you like the school?"

"Should I have any reason to?" I muttered. She looked at me, rather alarmed, before laughing a little.

"Oh, come on," She said a little too happily for my liking. "It's not that bad."

"Go on then, Petra Ral," I sighed, "list the advantages of being here, because I'm definitely not seeing them right now."

She looked around, panicked. "We never get caught smoking," She shrugged. "The teachers aren't that bad and the dinner ladies make a mean pasta sauce."

"'Mean' is a negative word."

"True."

We reached the back of the school gym. Petra led me around some gigantic green bins. Three male sixth formers were standing on this side of them. The tallest held a pack of cigarettes in his hand, his stern face softening to look grateful as he saw Petra. The other two were too busy staring at me, the new kid. One had small eyes and dark hair that actually was barely even there since he had such a small amount of it, the other was blonde with a peculiar haircut.

Petra reached in her pocket and produced a lighter. I'd never have expected someone who seemed so kind and gentle to carry a lighter around in her pocket. She passed it to the tallest guy and he placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. Petra did the same before passing the lighter and the cigarettes to the one I'd already mentally nicknamed Mole Rat.

"Everyone, this is Levi," She told the unlikely group of friends. They all eyed me and I did the same in return.

"Fresh meat, eh?" The tall, broad-shouldered one held his hand out. "I'm Auruo."

I stared Auruo's hand with a look that could silence the entirety of a thrash metal gig. "Alright then," He said roughly.

Petra took her cigarette out of her mouth and pointed it at the other two. "That's Gunther," She said as she pointed at Mole Rat, "and Eld."

"Right," I said disinterestedly.

"D'you want one?" Eld asked me as he offered the box of cigarettes.

"I don't smoke," I replied.

"Oh."

It was true that I didn't smoke. I was here because I was most likely to find friendship with people who came back here to escape the rest of this place.

Auruo threw his arm around Petra's shoulders and I could see instantly what they were to each other. They were in a relationship, obviously, and probably in love, which made me feel a bit sick. I didn't believe in love. No, that was a lie; I didn't believe that I'd ever fall in love, or that I'd ever let anyone else love me. Because, after all, love was a dead end road and once you got to the end, once you hit that brick wall and had to turn back, you'd see the path you'd travelled and you'd witness all of your foolish, blinded actions, the mistakes you'd made during your brief state of whatever the hell love really was.

What I really didn't understand was why anyone would want to commit to another person like that, not just romantically but in general, in life. Relying on another person to make you happy was pointless; when they inevitably left your life, just like my parents did when they left me and I was sentenced to a life in a foster home, your false happiness would disappear. Of course, a life without any love at all was more of an everlasting death than a life, so when I was finally adopted by the Smiths at the age of fourteen, I allowed myself to love my new parents and their son, Irvin, who was only a year older than me, as I imagined a boy would love his own family. But romantic love was a titanic no from me.

"This place smells like piss," I stated, to get rid of the thoughts I didn't want.

"I haven't pissed here," Gunther said quickly.

"Me neither," Eld added.

"Good for you both," I rolled my eyes. "Both of you have enough control over your bladders not to piss here. That's applaudable."

I heard someone coughing from the other side of the recycling bins we stood by, and the others must have heard it too, because they all jumped far enough to beat the Olympic high jump record. Then a girl made her presence clear by laughing at the frightened noises this group of brats had made. She stepped out to where we could see her. She was our age, in sixth form, with brown hair tied up in a high ponytail and glasses that shone almost scarily.

"You lot are going to get caught here one day," She said as she grinned widely enough to scare a small child, "mark my words."

"Jesus Christ," Petra put a hand to her chest, eyes wide. "You scared me."

The girl turned to me. "I'm not actually Jesus Christ. I'm Hanji Zoe. And you're new!"

"Is making that observation a requirement when someone starts coming to this shitty place?" I replied.

"Fancy words," Hanji raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess, you're taking English?"

"No."

"Oh. Damn, I guess all that effort I've put into improving my mind reading powers was useless," She joked. "So, are you going to tell me your name, or am I just going to refer to you as the moody guy with funny hair and a large vocabulary for the rest of our time here?"

"Levi," I replied shortly.

She looked as if she was waiting for a surname but I wasn't planning on saying anything else. When the Smiths adopted me, they legally changed my surname to theirs, but I didn't use any surname. I'd be dead before I'd start using the last name of my biological parents.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Levi," Hanji finally smiled. She lifted her hand to place it on my shoulder but thought better of it as I looked at her like I would at the dirt beneath my feet.

"So, Hanji," Auruo spoke up, "are you here for any reason other than to give us heart attacks?"

"I'm not planning on giving you guys heart attacks," Hanji laughed. "And I always have a reason to be here. To try and get you lot to stop smoking. But that's obviously never going to work, not even with my spectacular shock tactics, so my real reason to be here is to invite you all to my house party on Saturday night. And before you ask, yes, there will be alcohol."

"You're having a house party?" Petra looked surprised.

"Why so shocked?" Hanji mocked offence.

"Well, I just thought you spent most of your weekends doing work."

"I'm not _that _boring. And I'm sure you're not either," Hanji added as she turned to look at me again. "You should come!"

I stared at her and wondered if she was taking the piss out of the new kid. "I've known you for about two minutes, and you've already called me moody and insulted my haircut."

"What a brilliant way to start a friendship!"

"I don't know if I can get a lift on Saturday night," Petra said worriedly. I was about to suggest that she or one of the other boring bastards drove, but then I realised that I was the only one out of the six of us that was seventeen with a driver's license, not sixteen without the simplest form of independence.

"I can drive," I offered. I wasn't planning on going out and getting drunk anytime soon so I might as well help other people do so.

"Really?" Petra smiled.

"Hey, can you drive me there too?" Auruo asked.

"And me," Gunther and Eld said in unison before looking at each other to immaturely admire their synchronisation.

I shrugged. "I've got nothing else to do."

"And you'll stay, right?" Hanji asked enthusiastically. I'd thought that Petra's general happiness and optimism, although admirable, was slightly unnecessary, but Hanji's attitude towards anything and everything was actually painful.

"Alright," I sighed. Hanji started clapping. Actually clapping.

"Good," She nodded. "I'd ask you to join the science club here but you've already joined the smoking squad, I can see."

"Don't fucking start, Hanji," Auruo warned.

"Okay, okay," Hanji held her hands up innocently. "Anyway, my mission is accomplished. I'll see you all around. I'm so excited to be your friend!" She told me. Then she bounced away before I even had a chance to ask her where the hell she had the idea that we'd be friends from.

The students of Maria Comprehensive School were weird.

Term had started on a Wednesday, so I only had to endure another two days before the day of Hanji's house party. These two days were spent dragging my feet from Maths to French to the back of the gym, where I spent a lot of time since unofficially joining Petra's group of friends. I never said much. I never said much to anyone. School made me feel dead. The only thing that brought me even slightly back to life was PE.

Sometimes I checked the roofs of buildings for any brats from the year below attempting to retrieve footballs. I never saw any. Eren Jaeger was keeping his feet firmly on the ground.

I was at home, which was a house I shared with Irvin, since he turned eighteen and his parents – our parents, I should say – decided they were filthy rich and were going to buy us a house, because why not? I had about ten minutes before I was due to pick Petra and the rest of her friends up, so I knocked on Irvin's bedroom door, with the intention of letting him know that I was going out.

"Come in," He called. I opened the door reluctantly and saw that Irvin's room was quite a mess, but so was every room by my standards.

"Are you going to clean this shithole up?" I asked. "Or are you too busy plucking your eyebrows?"

"Grow the hell up," Irvin said from in front of the mirror. I look at him and he was indeed plucking his eyebrows.

"Sorry. Obviously the wings of freedom must be kept in top condition."

"Why are you in here if you can't stand how I like to live?" He asked.

"I'm going out," I replied.

Apparently this was even more important than the state of Irvin's eyebrows. He looked at me in disbelief. "You're going out?"

"That's what I said."

"You have a social life?"

"You're lucky your room's a fucking tip, because if I could actually walk across this floor I'd be smashing your head against that mirror, and then your eyebrows would be the least of your concern."

Irvin laughed. He was probably used to my empty threats. They weren't usually empty – anyone at my old school could vouch for that – but I wasn't cruel enough to beat my closest friend up, who also happened to be much taller and broader than me. He was also used to me telling him to tidy his crap up. "Why is this place so messy?" I asked, vaguely gesturing at the mountain of clothes on the floor, all of which looked to have come straight out of a designer catalogue or some fancy shit like that. In all fairness to Irvin, who was normally obsessed with organisation, his room was never this messy.

"Because I care about how I look."

"Are you saying I don't?"

"If the shoe fits," He shrugged. "I'm trying to find nice clothes. I've got a job interview tomorrow so I actually need to look good."

"Right. Well, if they don't offer you the job, tell them they're missing out on your eye make-up model potential."

"Thanks for your encouragement, Levi," Irvin sighed. "Where are you going, then?"

"House party," I said as I checked my phone. Petra had texted me with directions to her house, along with the very insistent instruction that I should not drive down about five specific streets that were near her house because my car would probably be egged, or maybe blown up.

Irvin stopped dead in his eyebrow-plucking tracks again. "You're going to a house party."

"I am going to a house party," I confirmed.

He cracked a smile. "Good for you."

"Don't smile." I hopelessly shook my head at the clothes on the floor and walked out of the room.

"Oh, goodbye," He called.

"Yeah," I replied as I grabbed the keys to my car and left the house.

One of the things I actually bothered to put any effort into last year was learning how to drive. It was a goal I'd set myself, and goals actually gave life some purpose, but since I didn't really foresee a future for myself there was no point in setting any anymore.

That was something that bothered me. I didn't have a future. I didn't see myself passing my A levels or getting into university, and I'd already spent one year failing college, so I was back to square one, while people like Irvin were already being employed. Irvin had a purpose and I did not. There was substance to his life, and the lives of so many others, but there was none to mine.

Petra lived in one of the roughest parts of Trost. Her house still stood out from the others; her street was full of houses that you could've sworn had been neglected for years, but it was clear that the Ral family made an effort to make their house presentable, to make it a home.

Petra emerged from her house with Auruo. Then we picked up Gunther and Eld, who I accidentally referred to as Mole Rat and The Other One during a pathetic attempt at conversation with Petra and Auruo. Once we arrived at Hanji's house I had to take a moment to adjust to how big it was and how many people were inside.

"Hanji's rich and popular," Petra said as we went through the front door.

A song with a persistent baseline under falsetto vocals was playing, although God knows where it was coming from in a place as big as Hanji's house, which itself was so colourful that I wondered if she'd just bought a shitload of tins of paint and threw them around the place.

"Supermassive Black Hole by Muse," Petra told me. "Hanji also likes weird music. And weird everything."

"Can't imagine why she thinks we're going to be friends, then," I murmured. Petra led me into what appeared to be the living room as the others disappeared after mentioning something about the alcohol Hanji had promised, and the place was so full of people that we couldn't move much further than the door. I looked around. The carpet underneath our feet was black but everything else in the room was yellow and orange and red like a fire, and the teenagers who danced all around us were the flames. People were pressed against each other in the corners of the room, hands and mouths quick. This party was lively, full of passionate people, and absolutely not the place for someone with a heart as cold as ice.

Petra was swaying her arms along to the beat of the song. No one was looking at me – some were drunk, others were too busy with their disturbing displays of affection – but felt like I stuck out.

"Don't you dance, Levi?" Petra asked, grinning.

"No."

"Not even in parties?"

"No."

"You're no fun," She teased as she reached out and grabbed my hands, swinging my arms. It was too much hassle to hurt her feelings by pulling my hands out of her grasp.

"Stop it," I demanded.

"No." She shook her head.

"Ral."

"No!" Eventually she did, anyway. "See how annoying that word is?"

"No," I replied with what almost resembled a smile. Petra sighed half-heartedly and I started moving somewhat to the beat. I was pretty much settling into the music when some brown-haired, wide-eyed kid in a hoodie came walking through the door with a beer in each hand and a loud mouth, followed by a taller guy who was rolling his eyes at the boy who walked in front of him.

I looked over and saw that the noisy one with two much alcohol for someone his age was the one whose sorry ass I'd saved twice that week. Eren Jaeger.

"For fuck's sake," I muttered as I noticed that he was about three inches taller than me. Was I the shortest person in this world?

Petra gave me a curious look as I glanced from Eren to the guy behind him, who I recognised as the one who was taunting the brat on the second occasion we'd breathed the same air. "Shit," Eren cried loudly as he suddenly stopped in his tracks. The other boy almost bumped into him, and Eren passed him both beers. His newly free hands went to his chest.

"Jesus Christ, what now?" Eren's friend – no, that was wrong, they definitely didn't seem like friends – huffed.

"I've lost my key," The brat replied, panicking.

"Sucks to be you," The other boy shrugged and walked past Eren, past Petra and I, with both beers still in his possession.

Eren didn't seem to notice this. He was frantically glancing around, looking at the floor, checking the pockets of his jeans. He was pitiful. "I'll be back in a minute," I told Petra as I walked over to voluntarily help this kid for the third time in four days.

"Um, okay?" Petra called after me with an amount of confusion in her voice that could probably have been measured in kilograms.

Eren was squinting at the floor, one hand still on his chest. I tapped his shoulder and he jumped a little as he turned around, looking up, probably expecting to see the beer thief who was actually on the other side of the room with a boy who was almost drowning in freckles. He looked down, confused, and a mixture of recognition and surprise flashed in his blue eyes as he saw me.

"Oh! Hi," He said, rather flustered.

"Do you need help again, Jaeger?" I offered, skipping past introductions. I already knew Eren's name and no one really needed to know me.

He looked at me and the surprise stayed on his face until it dissolved into relief. "That would be good," He nodded. "I mean, if it's okay with you."

"I'm offering, aren't I?"

"Well, you know, you've already –"

"Salvaged your remaining dignity twice this week?" I interrupted. "Might as well make it three."

"Thanks," He said gratefully. "I lost my key. It's gold and, like, this big," He held his thumb and forefinger about an inch and a half apart. This was my first proper conversation with Eren and he was already making suspicious hand gestures.

"Great. That's like losing a needle in a fucking haystack."

"I know, I'm sorry." Eren's eyes were full of worry.

"Don't panic, alright, brat?" I said in a moment of weakness, feeling sorry for him. "We'll find your key."

We started to look around, tracing Eren's steps as he muttered to himself, trying to think of any possible place he could've lost his goddamn key, but he was flustered and looked as if he was on the verge of tears, and I was spending most of my time pushing tall people, who didn't bother to look down in concern of short people such as myself, out of the way. In short, we were getting nowhere.

"Can't you sleep over a friend's house or something?" I shouted over some other weird Muse song that was playing. I was about to suggest that he phoned his parents but I thought about what my reaction would be if I was in his situation and someone had said that to me. That conversation would probably have ended in blood and broken limbs.

"It's not my house key," Eren replied, having to duck down for me to hear him. I hated many things. One of them was my height.

I gave the kid a dubious glance but didn't bother to say anything else. Maybe Eren Jaeger was a key thief, or perhaps this mysterious key was to some basement where dangerous experiments were being carried out. It was none of my business, whatever it was.

I followed Eren into Hanji's dining room, which contained the most gigantic fish tank I'd seen in my entire life. Hanji herself was standing next to it, talking to some guys who looked as disinterested as the Queen in the opening ceremony of the Olympics. "This one is called Bean," She was telling her unfortunate friends as she pointed at the ugliest fish in the history of ugly fish.

"I'm sure I had it when I was in here," Eren told me.

"At this moment in time I'm really not sure I can trust your memory," I replied.

The dining table was covered in legal poison. Bottles upon bottles of alcohol, some opened, some empty, sat on the table with shining reflections of Bean and his fishy friends. Two boys – no, they looked more like grown men than boys, although facially they looked the same age as Eren – and a blonde girl, with her hair tied up in a bun and a face so miserable that I wondered if I was looking at a mirror, stood around the table. Eren almost bumped into one of the boys, light-haired with a hilariously large nose, until he looked up. "Hi, Reiner," He said, smiling although the worry was still evident on his face.

"Back so soon, Eren?" The boy called Reiner (unless Eren was as forgetful as I was starting to think he was) grinned. "We're sixteen, you shouldn't be drinking that much."

Eren looked thoughtful, then as if he'd made a great scientific discovery. "Jean stole my beer."

I looked over at the other boy, as tall as Reiner, but with darker hair and nervous eyes. He looked terrified, and I wasn't sure if it was because of me or if that was just his natural state. People often described me as intimidating and it was kind of true, really. When people saw me they were probably expecting to get their heads kicked in rather than be given chocolate and fluffy toys.

I looked down at the floor. Reiner had distracted Eren with a conversation about Manchester United or some shit like that, so I was left to focus on why we were actually here.

Then a glint of gold caught my eye. Eren Jaeger's bastard of a key was under the table, tied to a piece of string. I knelt down to grab it, then interrupted Eren's pointless conversation with his friend by dangling the key in front of his face.

He looked at me, rather surprised. "You found it!"

"Call me a fucking Hufflepuff," I muttered under my breath, not wanting to disturb the brat's relief as he tied the string at the back of his neck and tucked the key under his hoodie.

"How the hell did you lose that, Eren?" Reiner asked loudly.

"I really don't know," Eren shrugged.

"Pretty irresponsible," The blonde girl said carelessly, "don't you think?"

I knew what Eren was capable of when people spoke like this to him. "Says the fifteen year old standing by a table full of alcohol," I said, not exactly eager to rescue anyone from any roofs.

"Best it all stays in the bottle and not over your head," She replied calmly. Eren was already walking away, and I didn't want to end up being dragged into a conversation about Hanji's fish, so I followed him.

"Bitch," I muttered about the girl as we left the room. I was expecting Eren to join in with the insults or at least tell me her name, but I heard nothing from him as we entered the crowd of teenagers in the kitchen. I looked up at him and his eyes were wide once again, greener than they were before, and I wondered if he was one of those people with eyes that changed colour. That or it was the beginning of his transformation into the Hulk.

Then I noticed that he could hardly breathe. "Oi, brat," I yelled to him over the loud music and the unnecessary shouting. "Are you alright?"

Eren looked at me. "I'm fine." But he was struggling to keep his voice steady.

"No, you're not," I told him as I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the back door. I was greeted by smoke as I opened it, and saw that Petra had found Auruo, although their mouths were much too busy to be smoking. Gunther and Eld were smoking along with some other idiots, and they waved at me as they saw me, but I wasn't the type to wave at people, so I nodded in return. I was doing a lot of that recently.

Hanji's garden was enormous. I led Eren out of the way of the smoke, and only as soon as I was sure he could breathe properly did I realise that I only had a t-shirt on and it was an absolutely freezing September night.

I waited for Eren to speak but he said nothing. Maybe I made him nervous. I told myself to soften my approach. "Are you okay?" I asked him.

He nodded. "I'm fine." No more than three seconds of silence had passed before he said, "I've been meaning to thank you."

"For what?"

"Well, you've saved me from detention with my English teacher," He began, counting the reasons on his hand, "being mocked to hell by Jean Kirstein, an argument with Annie Leonhardt, and maybe even from fainting just now, but I don't even know your name."

I crossed my arms over my chest, breathing sharply in an attempt to ignore the cold. "I'm Levi. And you're welcome."

"Are you cold?" Eren asked.

"It feels like the fucking Arctic out here." I wasn't one to give straightforward answers to questions, the answer was no, and in this case it certainly wasn't.

Eren was taking his hoodie off before I could even start to tell him not to. "I don't want your hoodie, Jaeger," I sighed.

"I'm the reason we're out here," He replied, offering his hoodie to me. "It's the least I can do. I owe you."

I hesitated, then took it and pulled it over my head. It was too big for me, it was red which was much too vivid of a colour for my liking, and his gesture of kindness was worthy of a much better person than I was, but it was warm. "Thanks," I murmured quietly. "Aren't you cold?"

Eren shook his head. "I was way too warm in there, anyway."

I gave him a stern look. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm completely fine," He said once again, slowly.

"Jesus Christ, brat, you said you were about to faint. Sue me for being a bit concerned."

"I was just worried," He shrugged as if nothing was bothering him. Again, I waited for him to elaborate but he didn't.

"About what?" I finally asked.

"Nothing, really." He wasn't fooling me. I of all people knew that behind those two words was a long list of problems. "It's just that my key is really important. To me, at least. The thought of losing it forever... I wouldn't even have found it by myself, and God, I'm careless –"

"No." Eren gave me a confused look, but even then his concern over this whole ordeal showed. The importance of that damn key and its presence against his chest was evident, and having almost lost consciousness from briefly losing it, it was clear how much he cared about it. "You're not careless, brat. If you could see yourself just like I can right now, you definitely wouldn't say that you're careless. We don't know each other for shit but I bet that's one of the last things you are."

He looked down at the grass under our feet. "Thank you, Levi," He breathed. Then he looked up at me again. "I should go and find Armin. And get my drink back from Jean."

"Pray that he hasn't hidden it on a roof, then," I said, allowing myself to sound gentler than I usually would. There was something about cold nights that made me want to leave them undisturbed, so I didn't raise my voice to much more than a murmur.

Eren smiled. "I'll see you around."

I nodded. "Maybe I'll even give you your hoodie back."

He laughed softly at that, then I watched him leave. I waited for a moment, watching my breath as it disappeared into the cold, before joining Eld and Gunther who were trying not to stare at Auruo and Petra's ongoing display of affection right next to them. I didn't have the heart to tell the sickening couple to knock it off.

There was so much love in this world, so much care, and amongst it all was me, the one who didn't feel like he had a heart at all.


	3. Chapter 3 - Eren

If I could have chosen absolutely anything for Nanaba to tell me at ten minutes past nine on a Monday morning, it would have been a tough choice between "the school has decided to give you, Eren, the entirety of the school funds for personal use", or "Jean Kirstein is being expelled for no reason". What I definitely wouldn't have chosen was:

"You're going to fail."

I didn't really find much comfort in the fact that our English teacher was saying this to my whole group and not just me, but the look on Jean's face was satisfying nonetheless. He looked kind of similar to how he looked when I told him Mikasa was fucking Annie Leonhardt, which wasn't actually true, but I wanted to piss him off. The fact that Jean wanted to fuck my sister was one problem, but the minor (okay, major) issue that Nanaba had no hope at all for us was more important.

"Well, that's optimistic," Connie sighed.

Nanaba continued to look at the work we'd done for this stupid assessment, which wasn't much other than the word "marijuana" written in gigantic capital letters on a piece of A3 paper. "You need to be doing a lot more."

"Maybe if I was working with Sasha I'd be working a lot better, Miss," Connie suggested, swinging back on his chair only to be told by Nanaba to stop that dangerous, foolish behaviour immediately.

"Maybe if Eren wasn't in our group we'd be working a lot better, Miss," Jean said with what Nanaba probably thought was a smile and what I considered to be a snarl. There were a lot of reasons why I missed football, and the opportunity to kick Jean's ass during training was one of them. In fact, right now it was at the top of my list of reasons.

Nanaba left with a huff. There was no chance she'd switch the groups around now, so instead of causing another riot about it, I started to glare at Jean, as usual.

"I think we should meet up after school to get this done," Marco said, and Jean and I stopped our glaring to look at him in disbelief.

"I'm not spending a minute more with _him_ than I already have to," Jean spat.

"You guys should be listening to Marco," Connie said as he used a red marker to turn the 'I' in 'marijuana' into a stickman smoking weed. "It's not his fault we're getting nothing done."

"Are you saying it's my fault?" I turned to my friend, blood boiling more than it already did when I had to breathe the same air as Jean.

Connie gave me a somewhat pitiful look. "Kind of, yeah."

"As team leader I suggest that we meet up tonight," Marco said.

Jean looked confused, which made his face look even uglier than it normally did. "Since when have you been team leader?"

Connie dropped his marker and picked up the only other piece of paper we'd written anything on. "Wednesday, ten twenty seven," He read out. "Marco Bodt is nominated by himself as team leader. Everyone agrees because no one in this group other than Freckled Jesus could organise a piss-up in a brewery, and that's coming from someone who's usually pretty enthusiastic."

"Did you actually write that?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"What if Nanaba sees it?"

"She won't," He said wisely. "Why do you think I'm putting so much effort into this stickman stoner? It's eye-catching. She'll only look at my brilliant work of art."

"Nanaba's right, we're going to fail," I sighed.

"Yeah, and it's all your fault," Jean snorted.

Anger management could go fuck itself. "Says the one who just sits on his ass every lesson and daydreams about fucking my sister –"

"I think Marco has a good idea," Connie interrupted. "We'll meet up in town tonight and actually do work, and you two won't start pointless fights with each other, and I'll pass English and become a millionaire."

I had to admit, at least mentally, that Connie was right. Arguing with Jean would not get me a GCSE in English language.

Jean and I continued our glaring match.

We agreed to meet in a cafe in town after school, even though the thought of spending time with Jean in any place other than school, where I was legally required to be, made me want to be sick. Even being in the same English classroom as him was a challenge to say the least, and our lesson lasted way too long because of that, but it finally ended and I caught up with Armin soon afterwards.

"Where'd Mikasa go?" I asked him.

Armin was one hell of a quick thinker, and thanks to that he was becoming quite a good liar too, but I was used to it and I could smell Armin's lies almost as well as Mike Zacharius could.

"She had to talk to the teacher," Armin replied.

"Sure. Armin, where's Mikasa?" I asked again as Annie walked past us.

Annie spoke without even turning to look at me. "She's with Jean again."

"What the fuck?" I yelled as I stopped in my tracks and looked around, trying to spot the disrespectful fucker who was trying to get under my sister's skirt. Surely enough, Mikasa was walking along the corridor slowly, very closely followed by Jean who had changed from his usual painfully honest and critical self to a stammering, blushing mess. If I wasn't concentrating on how badly I was about to fuck up his face with my fist, I'd have thrown up.

I felt Armin's small hand around my wrist. "Eren, no," He said cautiously, and I wondered if he was a mind-reader as well as one of the most intelligent students in the school, but then I realised that I was probably red in the face with rage and you didn't have to be telepathic to sense my hatred for Jean.

I shook Armin off as gently as I could, because he was Armin, and shouted along the corridor, "Hey, Kirstein! Just because my sister's wearing a skirt today doesn't mean you can look up it!"

Mikasa's sigh could've measured on the Richter scale – well, it probably couldn't have, as Armin would patiently explain to me. Jean looked like a deer caught in headlights until his eyes focused on me, and then he looked a bit like a boxer entering the ring: violent and threatening but definitely someone I'd try to beat up even if it got me more than a few bruises.

I ran against the flow of students until I could actually hear what Jean and Mikasa were saying. "Can you two deviate from your usual routine today and, you know, not fight?" Mikasa said from behind her scarf. "I'm not in the mood for this and I'm out of bandages for you idiots."

"He's the one who said I was trying to look up your skirt!" Jean argued. "And you know I'd never do that to you, Mikasa—"

"Oh, cut the shit, Jean," I spat, "you do it every day."

"You don't think I'd notice if Jean was looking up _my_ skirt, Eren?" Mikasa asked.

"Even if I did – which I didn't," Jean said quickly, "it's not like you'd actually notice, Jaeger. You don't exactly win awards for being observant."

I didn't mean to grab a fistful of Jean's green school jumper and throw him against the wall. It just kind of accidentally happened.

"Stay the hell away from me, Jean!" I screamed in his face, having completely lost interest in the masses that were crowding around us. "Stay away from us. If I see you anywhere near Mikasa again, well, you'd better start fucking praying!"

"For what?" He sneered. "What are you going to do to me, you shithead? Beat me up to keep your sister safe from the big bad wolf?"

"No," Mikasa said sharply as she yanked me away from Jean so quickly that I was sent staggering behind her. "I can fight my own battles." She turned to look at me, one hand on Jean's shoulder to keep him from launching himself at me. "And I can choose what I want to do with my own body too, thank you very much."

Jean looked furiously embarrassed. "I wasn't saying you couldn't take care of yourself –"

"And I wasn't trying to tell you what to do!" I said quickly. "You can have sex with whoever you want! Except Jean, maybe. But that's just a suggestion!"

"Wait, we're talking about sex?" Jean frowned. "Oh. Oh, um –"

Mikasa shook her head tiredly. "I'm not putting up with this for any longer. You two need to sort out your problems, and if not, at least keep me out of them." She didn't hesitate after that, pushing her way through the crowd of people to get away from us both. Slowly, the people themselves started to disperse, all except Armin who was standing awkwardly in the middle of the corridor.

"This isn't over," I hissed to Jean.

"What's not over?" He asked, almost laughing, and I had to fight the temptation to kick him in the face. "Your pathetic excuse of a fight?"

"Eren," Armin pleaded.

"Why can't you just let Mikasa do what she wants?" Jean said in a low, threatening voice. "She doesn't need you to babysit her. If anything it's the other way around."

I told myself to walk away but I couldn't, because what Jean was saying was true. Mikasa was stronger than me, and I knew that. As much as I tried to stop her from dating Jean, as much as I didn't want her to date this asshole or in fact any guy just so I could cling onto the idea that we were still kids, still innocent, still a family that didn't need anyone else, I knew Jean was right.

_Walk away, Eren,_ I imagined my mother saying, like she always did when I was younger and even then got into pointless arguments and fights. _Walk away and be the better person._

I started to walk away from Jean.

I didn't see him for the rest of the school day, which didn't actually turn out to be that bad. We had a theory lesson in PE with Mike, who I was still pretty angry with about the whole football thing, so I took the opportunity to piss him off as much as I could without getting into trouble.

"Right, any questions?" He asked the class as he finished drawing some weird diagram of a muscle or something. I stuck my hand up. "Eren?"

"Sir. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"

Marco texted me as soon as I was on the bus home, telling me we were meeting at a cafe called the Basement in town at half past five, and I realised I'd have to face Jean Kirstein again.

Jean always made me want to set myself on fire, but today he was making me want to blow things up.

As soon as I got home, I changed out of my school uniform and went straight into town on the first bus I could catch, since there was no reason in trying to talk to Mikasa considering she wasn't taking my side, even if she wasn't taking Jean's side either. It was five o'clock and I had about twenty minutes before I would allow myself to start to wonder where the hell the Basement actually was. I decided to go to my second home, and by that I meant the rock section in HMV. I had my hands on a limited edition copy of a Greenday album that wasn't even on eBay, and I was trying to pretend that I hadn't seen the price label on the back when I looked up and saw who was in the next aisle, squinting down at a DVD with enough judgement to make me think it could have been some really weird porn movie.

"Hey," I said to Levi, who was still wearing my red hoodie and looked at me like I was some really weird porn movie. Then he looked down at what he was wearing.

"Oh, it's you." He said. "Alright, Jaeger?"

I nodded, and started to think about how pathetic Jean sounded saying my surname compared to Levi. Actually, I thought Jean was pathetic compared to everyone.

I asked Levi what he was looking at and he held the DVD in his hand up for me to see. "French film. It's about rabbit sex, basically."

"Oh, nice."

"Has anyone ever told you that you can't hold a conversation for shit?" Levi said as he started to wander up the aisle. I felt the need to walk in the same direction as him so I did, pretending to be interested in the C section of albums, although to be honest Billy Ray Cyrus really wasn't my kind of thing.

"You speak French, then?" I asked.

"_Non_, brat. _J'aime élevage de lapins_." It was my turn to look at him blankly. "Yes, I speak French," He sighed.

"What did you just say? In French?"

"I told you I like rabbit breeding."

"We didn't learn about rabbit sex in year nine French," I mumbled, looking down wistfully at the Greenday album in my hands, which I decided to hide between two copies of Billy Ray's _Back To Tennessee_. I knew I'd never be able to afford a limited edition copy of anything unless I started working, maybe in somewhere like McDonalds, like Connie was planning on doing instead of going to college.

I checked the time on my phone. "I should go," I told Levi. "Do you have any idea where the Basement is?"

"The Basement?" He repeated. "Sounds like a sex dungeon."

I shook my head. "It's a cafe. Or at least I hope it is. I really don't want to go to a sex dungeon with Jean. I mean, Connie and Marco are going too – not that I want to go to one with either of them – I don't want to go to a sex dungeon with anyone –"

"You said you should go," He interrupted.

"Sex dungeons creep me out," I finished, and then realised Levi may have been thinking I'd actually been to one.

"Want me to help you find your non-sex dungeon?"

"That would be good," I nodded. We started to walk in the same direction, out of the shop, without buying any rabbit porn, or limited edition Greenday or Billy Ray Cyrus albums. We walked for a full five minutes without success before I decided to call Marco for directions, but his phone went straight to voicemail, so I called Connie, but again without success.

I scrolled down in my contacts to _Shit Horse Face Dickwad_ and tapped the green button to dial. Jean picked up after three rings. He greeted me politely:

"What the fuck do you want?"

"Where the fuck are you?" I asked him.

"In the Basement," He replied.

"Where the fuck is the Basement?"

"I don't know, buy a map." Jean started laughing at himself.

"From where, the same place as you buy your hair dye?"

Silence fell between us. "Walk to the end of Colossal Road and go through the alley between the last two shops. It's on the road on the other side of the alley."

"Cool," I said without thanking him, just to piss him off, and hung up.

I re-laid Jean's instructions to Levi, who looked doubtful as I mentioned an alley, but we kept walking anyway.

"God, I hate that guy," I muttered, more to myself than Levi.

"Cool," He replied, echoing what I'd said seconds earlier. We looked at each other. "What?" He shrugged. "You can't expect him to be nice to you if you're being a childish shithead to him."

"I'm not a childish shithead!" I defended myself quickly.

"Sure."

Again, we were quiet.

"No, but you don't know Jean like I do." I argued. "He's so self-centred and blunt and patronizing and he's obsessed with my sister –"

"Jaeger."

"What?"

"I don't care."

"Well, neither do I," I said. "I don't care about him. He's the shithead, not me."

"You do care," He corrected me. What was it with Levi and talking about caring? "You've been talking about him since you got off the phone."

"Yeah, but I haven't been saying good things about him."

"Makes no difference. If you didn't care you wouldn't say anything at all."

I was starting to get angry, mainly because when Levi put it like that he was right, but also partly because I was always angry. "I just want him to stay away from Mikasa," I said grumpily as we reached the end of the road and started to walk through the alley. "I don't care what he does – or who he does as long as it's not Mikasa. Anyway, he's probably dating Marco and just using her as a cover-up –"

"Be quiet, brat."

"I mean, it's pretty obvious those two are more than friends, they're always together and you should see the way they look at each other –"

"Jaeger, for God's sake, shut up," Levi murmured as he grabbed my arm, only briefly, to stop me in my tracks. Only then did I realise how loudly I'd been talking, and how quiet the alley was. I looked at Levi curiously but he silenced me with a glare before I had the chance to speak. I wondered what he'd seen or heard.

Something was wrong.

We walked further into the alley, slowly, carefully. My heart was pounding in my chest faster than it ever had in any fight with Jean, and that and our footsteps was all I could hear but those noises were too loud for where we were, almost trapped between two walls. It was claustrophobic.

It got even more claustrophobic when I felt an arm close around my throat from behind me, squeezing hard enough to choke any words I had left away.

I tried to yell anyway, but I was cut off by a hand pressed over my mouth. My first impulse was to move my head but I felt something cold and thin almost cutting into my neck. A knife.

My eyes began to adjust to the darkness and I looked around as much as I could without turning my head. A giant of a man had Levi in a headlock with a knife to his throat, too. If we had any means of escaping it would be a fight between two teenagers and two grown men.

"We want your money," The man who was almost choking me growled, his breath warm in my ear, smelling of alcohol although he spoke each word sharply like the knife he held against me, "but if you try to put up a fight, we'll kill you both."

"Scream and I'll slit your throat," The other guy hissed to Levi.

It wasn't a football or a key at risk here. It was our lives.

I could give these thugs my money and they'd let us go, probably, but maybe they wouldn't do that at all. I looked at Levi but he didn't look back at me. Was he planning something to get us both out of this situation, or was he giving in? I couldn't tell. I didn't know if he was the type to give in.

I thought of Armin and Mikasa, at home with no idea that I'd managed to get myself into trouble yet again, probably both finishing off their homework for subjects I'd found too difficult to take, so that when I got home, Armin could drag us both into playing Scrabble or Monopoly or some other kind of game only he enjoyed.

"Alright," Levi said quietly, and I was amazed by how composed he was. My hands were shaking but Levi was calmly complying. "Take our money. But drop the knives."

"No fuckin' way," Spat the one with Levi's head under his arm. "Not both, we ain't dumb."

"One of you, drop your knife, and you can have everything I've got," Levi offered.

I thought of Jean and Connie and Marco, waiting for me in the Basement. If Jean had played a prank on me and the Basement wasn't at the end of this alley at all, I'd give him a black eye to put all other black eyes to shame. I couldn't let Jean win. I couldn't die before even reaching the Basement.

"Okay," The guy nodded.

The cold feeling of metal against my skin disappeared. The knife that had almost cut into my flesh now clattered onto the ground.

Both of the thugs laughed and the sound of it made me shiver. We were both still trapped. I looked at Levi again, thinking that his plan to free himself from the weapon that was still being held dangerously close to him had backfired.

Finally, he looked back at me, almost expectantly, and then I realised that his plan was exactly this, all along.

Levi wasn't the type to give in, and neither was I.

Memories of self defence classes in PE rushed back to me. _Anyone can throw a grown man over their shoulder_, I remembered Mike telling us. _Armin could do it. Even Christa could do it. But the problem's always the weapon. If they're behind you with a knife to your throat and you flip them over, chances are you're going to get hurt._

His words weren't exactly encouraging at the time.

I thought of my mother and how I'd sworn to Mikasa that I wouldn't let what happened to her happen to either of us.

My mouth was slightly open since the dumb fucker behind me had clamped his hand across it as I was attempting to shout. I bit down on his finger until I could taste blood and a bit of regret, and he jerked his hand away.

_You've got the upper hand here, speaking hypothetically, _said Mike's voice in my head. _You've got free arms and legs. The stupid shit – sorry, shouldn't be swearing – has their arms up by your head where they can't reach the rest of you._

I grabbed the guy's shoulder with one hand and placed my other hand as far along his upper arm as I could reach, bent my knees, and threw him across my head. Maybe I shouldn't have grinned at the sound of bones cracking as he hit the ground, but God, it was satisfying to hear.

I quickly kicked the knife that lay by my feet away, into the darkest part of the alley, before I turned to see if Levi was okay or if he needed my help, but that was a foolish thought. He was a fast thinker, and that obviously applied to fighting too because the man who had threatened only minutes ago to slit his throat was now on the ground, being kicked right in the balls again and again.

"Trying to play me at my own game, were you?" Levi hissed with one more kick, sending the man screaming once more. "I think it's safe to say you just lost." He turned to look at me. "You okay?"

"Y-yeah, I'm fine – shit, behind you!" I yelled as the guy who'd grabbed me, now on his feet, lunged at the teenage boy who pretty much just saved me with his quick thinking.

Levi spun around and sent the guy flying into the wall behind him with one punch.

We made our way past the two writhing idiots on the ground. The one I'd thrown wouldn't give up, and was trying to grab the knife that the other one had dropped. I kicked him hard in the shoulder and didn't look back as I kept walking.

I blinked rapidly, my eyes adjusting again to the light as we stepped out of the alley and into a quiet street. There it was, the Basement, a thin building wedged between two houses with a sign in the window that red 'Cafe Downstairs'. Turned out Jean never intended on making me run into two thugs.

"There's your fucking cafe," Levi muttered, and I looked at him even though I wasn't really sure what I could say. "What?" He said. "You want some inspirational post-battle speech?"

"No," I murmured, looking away. "I'm sorry."

He sighed. "For what?"

_For being careless even though you think I'm not,_ I wanted to say, but it would be a waste of energy. _For being so blinded by my stupid rivalry that I couldn't even see the danger in front of me. For being a nuisance._

"For getting you into that," I shrugged.

"Nothing I couldn't deal with."

"I owe you," I said.

"Let me keep your hoodie for a while longer and we're even," He replied, and I couldn't help but smile, even though Levi didn't.

I nodded. "I should go."

"Yeah," Levi agreed. "You're about half an hour late, and good luck explaining why to your worst enemy."

I laughed despite the fact that I could still almost feel my heart in my throat. I found it pretty amazing how quickly someone who always looked so miserable could make me feel better.

We awkwardly said goodbye, and I spent the next hour and a half debating about drugs with Connie and avoiding arguments with Jean while Marco wrote everything we were saying down. By half past seven we were actually up to date with the project and had a pretty good chance of doing well. I caught the same bus home as Jean did and we were the only two on it, so he went straight to the back row, probably trying to avoid me, but I followed him.

"Hey," I began as I sat down, two seats away from him.

Jean narrowed his beady eyes suspiciously as if he thought I was going to launch into a musical number or throw eggs at him. "What do you want?" He asked.

"I've been an asshole to you."

"Yeah, you have," He nodded.

"I'm, uh, sorry," I said, and Jean looked as confused as he did when mitosis came up on last year's biology exam.

"Okay," Jean replied slowly. "Me too."

"You can date Mikasa if you really want to," I said. "As long as she does too, of course. I'm not exactly going to be your wingman but I'm not going to stop you both."

He looked surprised. "Thanks. Um, I didn't mean to replace you on the football team. I mean, I wasn't going to say no to being a striker, but I didn't set out to replace you."

We looked at each other, both unsure what to say next or whether to bump fists or hug, or do nothing at all. In the end Jean settled on leaning over and patting me gently on the shoulder. "Good talk," He said.

"Yeah, yeah, good talk," I agreed.

We were on the bus for another half an hour, and I considered striking up another conversation with Jean but eventually decided to listen to Fall Out Boy on my phone, with one earphone in just in case Jean started talking to me, which he didn't. I was first to get off the bus, and I even politely said goodbye to Jean as I left.

Jean was actually kind of easy to get along with. When I got home, I discovered that Mikasa was a different ball game.

"Where the hell have you been?" She demanded as I closed the front door behind me. She must have been waiting for me, because she looked impatient and, oh shit, pretty angry too.

I considered telling Mikasa why we finished so late in the Basement, but I was tired and I couldn't be bothered to listen to any of her lectures. "We had a lot of work to do," I told her, rubbing my eyes and yawning for dramatic effect.

"Really? And you didn't get sidetracked on your way there?" She asked. "You didn't turn up half an hour late?"

"No –"

"So Jean lied to me, then?" Mikasa raised her eyebrows and I opened my mouth to argue, but she silenced me as she held up one finger. She got her phone out of her pocket, tapped a couple of times, and started reading. "Five fifty six. Jean Kirstein. Any idea where Eren is – no question mark – he's like half an hour late."

"I met someone I know," I explained, and technically I wasn't lying. I was just withholding a lot of the truth.

"Who?"

"Someone from sixth form."

"A girl?" I shook my head. "A _boy_?"

"Yeah, but not like that!"

"Eren, is there something you need to tell me?" Mikasa asked, crossing her arms.

"No," I shook my head once again. "Stop questioning me!"

"You can't blame me for being worried," She replied. "I'm your sister, of course I got worried about you being alone in town – or even with a sixth former."

"Why are you always worried about me?" I yelled. "Don't you trust me? I can take care of myself!"

"I know that, Eren –"

"I don't need you to look after me all the time." I started to storm up the stairs as I spoke.

"Eren, wait!" Mikasa shouted.

"I don't need you!" I screamed, slamming my bedroom door behind me.

I took a sharp breath and immediately regretted the lie I'd just told Mikasa.

"Eren?" Said a much softer voice than the one that was interrogating me just a few seconds before. I turned to see Armin sitting on my bed. He did that a lot when he was scared. He said it made him feel closer to me, which made him feel safer.

I couldn't even keep myself safe, let alone my best friend.

"Are you okay?" Armin asked as I sat down next to him, bright blue eyes looking at me worriedly.

"I'm fine," I replied, smiling, but I couldn't look at him as I said it and I looked down instead, seeing that my hands were trembling again. "Why are you here?" I asked him, even though I knew why he was in my room. A better question would've been _why are you scared?_

I looked back up at him and it was his turn to look down, hiding behind his blond hair. "I don't like it when you and Mikasa argue," He murmured.

"I'm sorry, Armin," I said, and I meant it more than any apology I could remember giving him. Upsetting Armin made me want to punch myself.

_I'm sorry for being so hot-headed that I jump straight into arguments without considering the consequences, _I thought.

_I'm sorry for letting my emotions get the better of me._

_I'm sorry for my bad temper and my lies._

_I'm sorry for being so useless._


End file.
